Polyjuice
by AnnieF1229
Summary: Hermione finds a vial of Polyjuice Potion at the end of sixth year and wants to use it to escape curious eyes for a few hours.


Polyjuice Potion

Hermione was cleaning out her trunk and throwing away everything that she didn't need. Broken quills, empty ink pots, and crumpled pieces of parchment were tossed into the bin next to her bed to make room for the neatly stacked books and folded robes that she was taking home. She lifted up a pair of dreadfully ugly socks and went to toss them onto her bed thinking that Dobby might like them when she felt something weird. There appeared to be something hard wrapped inside the socks. She unraveled them and let out a gasp of surprise as a small vial rolled onto her palm. Polyjuice Potion, she realized. She had hidden the excess Polyjuice Potion from second year in her trunk and completely forgotten about it until now. She looked in the vial and noted that there was enough for one person for maybe 6 hours. She looked around at everything she still had left to pack and thought about how she Ron, and Harry were on the precipice of the unknown and realized that an escape was a welcome thought.

She checked to make sure that she was alone, but realized that all of the girls in her year had left right after the funeral. She walked into the adjoining bathroom and opened a drawer under the sink. Lavender, she knew, was very forgetful and usually left at least either her hairbrush or various makeup contraptions lying around at the end of every year. "Aha," she said aloud. "So forgetful." She pulled out the brush and plucked out a long blonde hair. She looked at herself holding it in the mirror for a moment before making a decision and dropping the hair into the vial clasped in her other hand.

She felt the painful transformation beginning within her and fell to the floor coughing wildly. After a few minutes she found herself panting on the tiled floor and lifted her hand slowly only to let out a sigh of relief when it lacked black fur. She didn't want to have to explain turning into a cat to Madam Pomfrey ever again. She pulled herself up by grasping the sink and looked into the mirror to see Lavender staring back at her. She took a moment to turn left and right and nodded approvingly at her transformed appearance. She was free to walk around the castle one last time without encountering stares because of her association with Harry.

She slipped out of the Gryffindor common room without meeting anyone else and walked along the seventh floor corridor. Without really thinking, her steps took her straight to the library and she smiled as she looked up at the sign posted outside. She meandered through the aisles carelessly caressing the spines of the books on the shelves as she did so. She pulled down a random book on spell-work, brought it to her favorite table by the window, and plopped down in a chair. A while later, she was so absorbed in the text that she didn't realize she wasn't alone until she heard a cough and looked up to find Ron standing in front of her table.

"Thought you'd gone home after the funeral?" he asked.

"Oh, umm I was supposed to but my parents decided to let me wait until term officially ended." She watched as he nodded in reply and glanced around avoiding eye contact. "I was bored so I decided to come down here and pass the time reading." Hermione realized her mistake as soon as the words left her mouth and she awkwardly fiddled in her seat, finally resting with both legs tucked underneath her.

"You were bored and decided to read?" Ron questioned. "That sounds like something Herm-" he cut off in the middle of his sentence and began to blush a deep red. "I'm sorry, Lavender I didn't mean to upset you." He reached his hands out in the air as if expecting a verbal backlash and was preparing for defense. But to his surprise, Lavender smiled back.

"No, no. I realize that she's your friend. I'm sorry for overreacting before. It just seems so pointless now after everything that's happened, you know?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah, you're right. Mind if I-" he gestured towards the chair across from her and pulled it out to sit when she nodded. "I still can't believe it about...you know. I mean, I guess I knew he couldn't live forever but I never really thought about the possibility of a Hogwarts without Dumbledore." He began to lazily draw patterns on the tabletop with his finger and seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.

Hermione found herself following the path of Ron's index finger as it traced lazy circles around knots in the wood. She had never seen Ron so distant and grew sad realizing that this was the first real death he'd ever experienced. She knew that Ron wasn't necessarily close to Dumbledore, she didn't think they'd ever even had a private conversation, but she also knew that he was concerned for his family and friends in the facing of the coming war.

"I'm afraid," he told her as he glanced up. It was barely a whisper, but in the silent library it seemed to echo around them.

"I am too," she admitted. "No one knows what's going to happen or where we'll all be this time next year." She played with her hair, twirling it around her finger, as she admitted this. It was nice to be able to share these feelings out loud even if Ron thought that he was talking to Lavender. He smiled at her while shaking his head slightly.

"I, uh, I know one thing for certain about next year." She looked at him questioningly and he cleared his throat before saying, "I know I'll be with Harry and Hermione no matter what happens. We'll be together." He had a look of complete resolution on his face and Hermione had to look away from his intense gaze. "Well," he said getting up from the table. "I'm going to go start packing. You told me to hours ago."

She watched him leave, still reeling from what he said about being with her and Harry and the determination with which he said it. Eventually, she turned back to the book in front of her and read a few more chapters before realizing that her time as Lavender was almost over. She closed the book and placed it back on its shelf before starting her walk back to the common room.

She raced back up the stairs to the girls dormitory and picked up where she left off packing. She began to play back her conversation with Ron in her mind. It was nice to see a more gentle side of Ron, but she was slightly upset that he had felt comfortable opening up to Lavender and not her.

"I guess he still has feelings for her," she lamented aloud to herself. She finished packing her trunk and closed the lid. She went into the bathroom to wash her hands and noticed that she had morphed back into herself. She twisted her hair around her finger and froze.

She had just remembered something that Ron had said to her in the library. "You told me to pack hours ago," he had said. Surely Lavender, who really had left the night before, hadn't told Ron to pack his trunk earlier this morning.

"He knew," she mumbled. "How did he know?" she asked her reflection.

Later that night, she was sitting in her favorite chair by the fire when Ron came down the stairs which led to the boys dormitory by himself. "Hey," he said when he spotted her. She noticed that he had a very sheepish expression on his face.

"Finished packing?" she asked him with a raised eyebrow. "Yeah, uh, I finished a little while ago." He sat down in the chair opposite hers and bent over so that he was clasping his hands while his elbows rested on his knees.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Hermione suggested they head up to sleep for a couple of hours. They walked over to where the stairs split, the boys dormitory to the left and the girls to the right. They faced each other and Hermione said, "Well goodnight. See you in the morning." He reached over and twirled one of her curls the same way she had earlier in the library. He let it drop and watched it bounce back up. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could he gave her a small wink and bounded up the stairs to the boys dormitory. She smiled slightly to herself and walked up the stairs to bed.


End file.
